


Bakeru

by Shoi



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:22:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shoi/pseuds/Shoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They’ve made a joke of you, Vanya.”</p>
<p>“I have made it,” he said, voice strangling, hurting, “of myself.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bakeru

**Author's Note:**

> ivan karelin doesn't quite fit in any of the worlds he inhabits.
> 
> i haven't tagged this for non-con/rape because it's not, really, but it is forceful and sort of dark, so please proceed with caution.

They’d had a daughter, for a few months. A pretty little girl, who looked just like her mother.

Oneesama had taken her aside one day, had cupped her face between her hands. 

“Don’t,” she’d said. “Don’t change yourself. Promise me you’ll try to be yourself.” 

(Like she had known. He thought, later, that it was terribly likely that she had.) 

*** 

Everyone had to be registered, no matter what they did, or what they intended to do, no matter how mild the case was or how common the manifestation was, how harmless or invisible. Otousan and Okaasan had been worried (“So worried!” Okaasan would say for years afterwards, “You were only three!”) but they had gone to the registration office all the same, through the chilly autumn city morning, because they were not in a position to test the boundaries of the still tender new laws. There had been a line (“It was cold, but people were friendly, at least!”) and they had waited for some time, but at last they had been shown in through a fine marble lobby and into the registration department, where an impatient young woman had parted them. 

(“She said that all examinations were done privately,” Okaasan would say, her expression displaying precisely what she thought about that, “In case of accident or ‘performance inhibition.’ But you were so brave, Aiji. We were so proud.”) 

The registrar had, in retrospect, probably not been so very large, but he loomed tremendously in memory, a broad shouldered man with an equally large orange mustache and a deep, discomforting voice. His face had not been a patient one, nor a kind one, but (“So brave!”) Okaasan had counseled courage. 

“Amamiya,” the registrar had said, looking down from over the edge of that gigantic orange bristle. “All right. What is it you do?” 

There had been no way to explain it, not in the words the strange man wanted. He’d said, “ _Boku wa hito ni bakeru._ ” 

“English,” the registrar said. His impatience and disgust were tangible. “What do you do?” 

He hadn’t known what else to say. Instead, he had summoned his courage, just as Okaasan had told him to do, and he had demonstrated. 

He told Karina the story years later, one evening when they’d walked out to seek a still open tea shop in the Eastern Silver districts, and her eyes had gone wide and momentarily horrified. 

“He started screaming?” she said, shaking her head at the same time. When Karina had opinions, the world knew them in detail. “What a freak. Why did he do that?” 

“I turned into him,” he said, quietly. “And I asked him, in his voice, what it was _he_ did.” 

“Ass,” Karina said, linking her arm through his in a matter-of-fact, sisterly way. “Normal people can be so ignorant.” 

*** 

The first real thing that Jake said to him was, “Why?” 

*** 

They had given him no illusions about the oddity of their family. His parents were forthright people, who took all things to do with their community with complete seriousness, and their son was no exception. His was an uncommon position, and would often be an uncomfortable one. He learned humility early on, learned to be small and charming and to address nearly everyone he met as his better. This came alongside the martial arts lessons, the beginning steps in chado, kyuudo, ikebana. “You weren’t born to us,” Okaasan would say. “Your birth parents were in a great deal of trouble already when we met them, but they were good people at heart. When they passed away, it was only natural that we take you in.” 

It had been the same with Oneesama as it was with him; their parents were community supporters, pillars of support for everyone who came to Stern Build with nothing but desperation. (“They collect strays,” she’d say, laughing, holding him in her lap in the room they shared above Okaasan’s first teahouse. “They’re more Mother and Father to me than my own parents. And they like Dummy a lot. Anybody who likes my Dummy is good in my book.”) 

All the traditions of his parents had been made available to him, and he had embraced them. The problem was he enjoyed tradition and order. It made sense to him from the beginning, to take care over the small things, because the world was chaotic and unfair. You took your time with things that were beautiful, and temporary, because then there was the illusion of control. You could create perfection temporarily, create moments that would always last, even when they were over. Everything was temporary, really, cities and fame and people, too. 

Things changed easily, and quickly. That was the way of the world. And him, too. Especially him. 

*** 

“Why?” 

He knew what the question meant, because it was something he’d agonized over alone for years. He could feel the pinpricks of a dozen evilly lit strands of hair against his skin, little needles against muscle and bone, little intentions not his own sizzling through his nerves. He knelt obediently, silently, and could not explain that he would have done so even without this force, these otherworldly shackles. That he could shackle himself perfectly well, if only someone would ask. No one had ever asked. 

“Because,” he said, “Someone must.” 

Jake laughed. 

*** 

Tiger had been angry, the night Origami debuted. He’d known Tiger would be, without the context; he supposed he would be too, in Tiger’s position. Pageantry was only charming when it came from the people who owned it, and certainly Tiger had seen quite enough of his heritage and culture dressed up and paraded around for the city’s entertainment. Tiger had cornered him after the cameras were off and he’d been afraid despite himself, despite what he knew; that this man was a gentle man, who forgave more easily than he ever should, that they shared a similar hole in their inner walls, in the same place. Tiger was a magnificent and frightening beast, even if no one else could see it sometimes. 

“Kid,” Tiger had said, in his rolling English, “I don’t know who you are, or what you think you’re doing, but this is a little too much.” 

“Yes,” he’d said, in the same language, fighting his own misery. He hadn’t wanted to make things clear so soon. Not even his parents knew. “Yes, I’m sorry.” 

“This isn’t a game. It’s dangerous. And you look-” Tiger had struggled for the right word, the polite word, because he was rough and he was straightforward but this was their place of similarity. “You look silly.” 

“My sponsors,” he’d said, “thought it would be charming.” 

“It’s a goddamn sideshow.” 

“I’m sorry.” He was. 

Tiger had paused, then, because he’d heard that particular word before, again and again, at amusing moments and at terrible ones, and then he’d said in a wholly difference voice, “Ivan?” 

“I’m sorry, Oniisama.” That was all there was, even when Kotetsu had pulled him into a rough embrace, had pulled his helmet off to ruffle his pale sweaty hair. 

*** 

(“We know you’d never do anything to put yourself in serious danger,” Okaasan said, always, careful to never meet his eyes when she did. “We’d be very upset if you did, Aiji.” 

“Of course,” he said, always, equally careful, and his parents knew, of course, who he was and what he did, but they had made it clear they would not stop him, not if it was what he wanted. Not even after they had lost a daughter.) 

*** 

“You,” Jake said, his fingers digging into his jaw, his eyes amber and unfocused, “Are a liar.” There was the smell of burning flesh. He would not surrender. Surrender was a gift. 

“I am,” he said, “A changling.” 

Jake didn’t laugh, this time. His face grew serious. He looked down, all attention. 

“I know,” he said, “But show me. Not party tricks, Ivan. Vanya. Show me your real face. Go on. Don’t be shy.” 

He thought of stray promises and failures, his own and those of others, of people gone forever, people who should have been. He’d summoned his own aqua fire and felt Kriem’s power through the strands of her hair that impaled him, singing angrily in tandem, fighting to contain him, this hissing, spitting, fanged creature of all faces and none. She screamed briefly, but silenced herself as Jake caught him by the throat and turned him easily to the ground, like an errant kitten. 

He lay, sprawled and limp, nailed down by her force of will and by the weight of old promises and instincts. 

“Wonderful,” was all Jake said, one hand still on his throat, close to strangling, the other caressing his face like a child. “Wonderful. That boy doesn’t deserve you.” 

*** 

She had been gone two years, by then. Edward was strong, and at first it seemed as though he would be enough. Something had to be. Someone had to be. 

Edward was fascinated by his power, and he thought later it should have been a warning sign. 

(“It isn’t useless,” Oneesama had told him, “Vanya. There’s a place for someone like you. You’re stronger than Dummy, over here.” Her laughter, always, deceptively gentle. She was stronger than anyone.) 

“Show it to me,” Edward said, and he did, and Edward’s will and want of control was deep enough that it had seemed like truth, like the water mirage to a man dying in the desert. Even the first time, it had seemed all right, even though she felt strange and misdirected during and strangely ignored after; the first time she’d been good, she knew she had been, because he’d told her so. 

The second time, he hadn’t been able to delude himself further, and it had become a test, instead. He could be good, she could be good, be perfect in the face of a weak and unworthy master. She could be someone he was not. 

*** 

(“Never change for someone, Vanya,” her voice, always, her perfume, always. “Not deep down. You are you, no matter what you look like. I love you.” 

Kotetsu knew, and it was their shared void, the place where the darkness went when being calm and cheerful and normal was necessary. The tiger knew the way of camouflage the same as the fox did. Neither of them would be the same, after this, and he never forgot his last disobedience to her. He was changed, in her absence, and forever.) 

*** 

“I’m not going to kill you. What a waste. I just want you to think, okay? Think, think.” Every fingertip burned with a purpose. He felt his skin scarring beyond what his reconstructive abilities could endure, felt the cry rising again and again to his lips, and swallowed it all. “I want you to think, Vanya. What are they afraid of? What will you do with this beauty of yours? Can’t you destroy them already without it?” 

“Yes,” he said, “Yes, yes.” The edges of blades and the curves of swords, swift silver and solid metal, he knew them. Jake’s hand burned a finger star print over his heart and he thought about being mismatched, about trying to look like his sister, his parents, his brother in law, trying to match on the outside what lay inside. 

“They’ve made a joke of you, Vanya.” 

“I have made it,” he said, voice strangling, hurting, “of myself.” 

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. Think. Think about it. Come back to it. Come back to me. If I win, come back to me.” 

He thought about Edward, and about how he’d never been touched like this, not really; he’d been someone else then too, someone softer, rounder, female. 

“I will,” he said, and he lifted his head against the weight of Kriem’s alchemy, eyes blazing, change rippling over his face, his voice rising and lowering beyond his control as he spoke. “But only if you prove yourself, Jake Martinez. All submissions will be earned. And only-” the words fading, lifting again, “-only if you win.” 

It was the last thing he truly remembered, though he tried, in later days. 

*** 

“What did he do to you?” Tiger’s voice was full of horror, and anger, and that terrible sadness he was so familiar with. He couldn’t see, not really, and his mouth tasted of blood and burning. “Ivan, please. What did he do?” 

The snow was starting to fall again, and behind Tiger Barnaby was a statue carved from solitude and seething rage. The distance between them was tangible in the chill, and he thought, _/not because of me. Please. This is my choice. It’s mine./_

“Ivan—” Tiger, cradling him, voice breaking, and he knew Kotetsu was thinking of her, what he would say to his dead wife if he let her little brother die here, bloody and beaten on a singed warehouse rooftop. “Ivan what did he do?” 

“Proved himself,” Ivan whispered, and let his head fall against Tiger’s armored chest. “But I am myself.” His own voice was faint, but it was steady. “It was my choice.” 

He closed his eyes, and away into the darkness he prayed they’d be strong enough to win.


End file.
